


The Candle's Reflection

by old_and_new_friends



Series: The Candle or The Mirror [5]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 10:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30138159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/old_and_new_friends/pseuds/old_and_new_friends
Summary: When his kidnapping turns into an assignation plot, Prince Lu Ten assumes he's done for. The last thing he sees as he dies is a strange man in a doorway.Eighty years in the future, General Iroh started his vacation on a low note when a letter from home brings nothing but bad news. It get's worse when he discovers an injured man on his doorstep.Meanwhile across the city, Detective Mako is avoiding everyone and everything as he throws himself into his work. A call from General Iroh makes for an interesting case, sure to keep him busy.Agni made a mistake.The spirits had a mission but one small prayer may have thrown it all off.Iroh's world is crashing down around him, Mako has never felt more alone, and Lu Ten should have died. Three men from different times, and different back grounds have been set on the same path of destiny, a different one then planned, but still one that may change them all, forever.
Relationships: Bolin & Mako (Avatar), Iroh & Lu Ten, Iroh II & Izumi (Avatar), Iroh II & Lu Ten & Mako, Korra & Mako (Avatar), Lin Beifong & Mako, Lu Ten/Mako
Series: The Candle or The Mirror [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1668550
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	The Candle's Reflection

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Anniversary to this Series! One year ago today I posted Book One Community!
> 
> I told myself I wouldn't write this version but I figured that even though I have no clue where it will go, I do at least know these four chapters. Basically, Agni snagged the wrong firebender and brought them through to the wrong time. Yes, Lu Ten is a non-bender now, and yes he'd still be Agni's chosen even so but that doesn't matter so much as that part of the story isn't getting told.

Lu Ten squirmed in his binding as he tried to kick himself free. He'd never really had an issue protecting himself with how tall he was, but no matter which way he pulled, he couldn't get his captor to release.

Lu Ten cursed loudly, the sound scraping at his sore throat. He kicked out wildly, his flames catching on nothing. 

“Shut up, brat,” Colonel Ryo said. Lu Ten growled at him. “We don’t take orders from you anymore. We are not going to allow you and your father to ruin our great nation. If the mud monkeys want help us take out a little royal trash then by all means who are we to say no.”

Lu Ten's blood ran cold at that and he froze. The other two men laughed at his reaction.

They were going to kill him. Lu Ten started shaking slightly at the thought. He didn't want to die. Surely his dad would notice he was missing by now. They couldn't kill him.

Lu Ten wasn't ready. He had stuff left to do. He had to make up with his dad and he needed to teach Zuko that sword trick he promised and maybe fall in love. He'd never even had his first kiss.

“Is this the Prince?” A new voice asked.

Lu Ten tensed, wondering who else was with them.

“Sure is,” Colonel Ryo said.

Lu Ten blinked as the sack was pulled from his head and he could suddenly see again. His heart rate picked up as he realized the soldiers across from him were Earth Kingdom.

Lu Ten felt his temper rise at the realization that the men who captured him weren’t acting alone. They were working for the enemy.

“You can’t do this!” Lu Ten shouted. He kicked wildly behind himself and hit something.

For a moment, Lu Ten thought he was free as the man holding him let go. Then there was a sharp kick to his leg. It bent in a way it shouldn't and snapped. The sound Lu Ten let out didn't sound human.

Lu Ten collapsed at the pain, as tears ran down his face. He wanted his dad. He wanted to be back home.

He heard people laughing and cried harder.

“That’s enough now," The Earth Army soldier from before said. "You’ve delivered the Prince to us and in good faith we will let you leave uncaptured.”

Lu Ten could hear the men who brought him here walk away. Lu Ten's body was shaking uncontrollably as a boot was placed under his chin.

His face was lifted until Lu Ten was staring up at the man who'd kill him.

“We will try to make this as painless as possible kid," the man said. "We didn’t realize just how young you were but rest assured, your death will mark a turning point in history as the day we finally strike our first blow back against the Fire Nation.”

Lu Ten choked on a whimper as the boot disappeared and he collapsed back down to the dirt.

His leg was burning with pain and he felt sick with fear as the soldiers lifted boulders overhead.

"Please," Lu Ten whispered. "Agni, help me."

It was useless. The rocks dropped and Lu Ten couldn't even scream from the pain, his voice giving out completely.

His vision blurred and the world spun. The last thing Lu Ten saw before he died, was a strangely dressed man looking down at him from a doorway.

Iroh’s vision blurred as he read the last line of his mother's letter. His breath started coming in shorter bursts. He tried tucking his head between his knees. He was shaking uncontrollably. His hands clenched in front of him.

It felt like hours. It was only minutes.

There was no way. His grandfather had always been indestructible when Iroh was growing up and even recently the man had seemed at the top of his game. Iroh felt like the ground under his feet had collapsed. His grandfather had been his everything to him, from a mentor to a friend to a father figure.

Iroh’s breathing had slowed down and at some point, his nose had started to bleed. His hands were still shaking with aftershock tremors when he reached back for the letter to make sure he was reading it right.

The words “Coronation”, “Heir”, “Engagement” and “Funeral” popped off the page as if mocking him.

He couldn’t do it. It was too much all at once. He felt more trapped than he had ever felt in his life. The very walls of his office felt like they were closing in on him.

Feeling himself spiraling, Iroh got up to search his kitchen for something stronger than the coffee he had, before reading his mother’s letter. Having not been to his Republic City house for the past year, the cabinets proved to be rather bare. All he could find was tea, gifted from his mother, from his grandfather, his friends and co-workers and even random dignitaries he’d met over the years, stock piled away in a cabinet he never really used. Iroh didn’t even like tea.

Jerking back from the cabinet in disgust, Iroh moved to pull his shoes back on. There was a bar down the street and Iroh felt like making a few bad decisions.

He pulled open the door to his townhouse and nearly fell down the stairs as he nearly tripped over a body on his doorstep.

"What in Agni's name?" Iroh asked. Panic surged through his as he realized the man was hurt and badly.

He bent down slightly and pressed his fingers against the man's pulse. There was a thready beat under his fingers and that Iroh even more worried.

He looked down at the other man. He was tall. Taller than Iroh's grandfather. Late grandfather, Iroh corrected a pang going through his heart.

He was also dressed in a very old Fire Nation uniform. The kind not used in over seventy-five years.

Iroh rolled the man over and realized how much damage had been done. He looked like he'd been in a landslide but that made no sense. They were in the middle of Republic City.

“What happened to you?” Iroh asked, looking to the man’s face.

Iroh gasped as a familiar portrait flashed through his head. He’d walked past that portrait every day, as it had hung on the wall outside his bedroom when he was growing up. He looked like the long dead Prince Lu Ten, but that made even less sense than the landslide theory.

Iroh shook himself and ran inside to call the police station. Regardless of who he was, he needed help.

It was eight at night and Mako was still hidden away in his office. The case he was flipping through wasn’t too important but it was something to do, something to distract him. People were going missing around the spirit portal. They would then reappear a few months later with no memory of the incident or the few days prior to their disappearances. Mako sort of envied them. He would love to forget the last few days, even weeks of his life.

No one had gotten hurt, so far, so the case remained low priority. Still, it was an inconvenience so Chief Beifong had handed it off to him. He wrote it off as a semi-vengeful or prankster spirit and resolved to tell Korra about it.

Mako was jerked from his thoughts as the station phone rang. He ran to pick it up, not caring how long he'd been working. He needed the distraction.

"Republic City Police," Mako called through the phone. "Detective Mako speaking."

"This is General Iroh," came the reply from the phone. "I have a pretty beat up man on my doorstep. I don't know where he came from or what happened to him. He appears to be severely wounded and if I had to guess it was earthbenders who did it."

"Can you give me an address?" Mako asked. He jotted down the number General Iroh gave him. "I'm on my way. Do I need to call for an ambulance?"

"I'd appreciate it if you did," General Iroh said.

"Will do," Mako said, before hanging up. He called the hospital before turning to leave only to slam into Chief Beifong.

"Where are you going?" She asked. "It’s late. Go home."

"General Iroh called," Mako said, avoiding her gaze. "He's expecting me."

Chief Beifong sighed. "Handle whatever this is and then go home, Mako," she said.

"Yes, ma'am," Mako said, having no real plan to comply.

He stopped outside General Iroh's home as the ambulance was loading the injured man into the back.

"What happened here?" Mako asked, marching up to the General.

"I don't know," he said. "I didn't hear anything. In fact I wouldn't have known he was there if I hadn't been leaving to go somewhere else."

Mako narrowed his eyes. "At this time of night?" Mako asked. The only people out this later were partygoers, alcoholics, teenagers with nothing better to do and criminals. Iroh didn't strike him as any of those things.

"I needed a drink," General Iroh said, looking away. There was a blush on his face as he said it. "It's not been a good day and there's nothing to drink in my house but tea."

"Do you know the man?" Mako asked.

General Iroh hesitated and Mako noted it in his book.

"I don't know," he said. "He seems familiar but the man I'm thinking of died in the war."

Mako blinked and pulled his flashlight out.

General Iroh flinched as Mako shined the light in his eyes.

"What?" General Iroh asked.

His eyes didn't dilate. "Just checking that you haven't been drinking already," Mako said.

"Amazing detective work," the General bit out. "I just told you I only have tea in my house!"

Mako shook his head. "I'm riding with you," Mako called to the ambulance. It was clear Mako's answers lied with the man in the back, not the man standing next to him. It was also clear he’d just found another excuse not to go home.

He raised a brow when Iroh also joined the ambulance ride.

"You know there's only so much room back here," Mako said.

"Someone needs to take care of him till he wakes up," General Iroh said. "He tried to die on my doorstep, so I guess it's me."

"You have no clue who this man is, he could be a criminal," Mako said.

"Don't care, he’s hurt," General Iroh said, surprising Mako enough that he fell silent.

Lu Ten woke to an aching pain in his leg. It radiated out from his lower leg and settled into his kneecap, before working its way to his hip. It was an odd, throbbing pain he had never felt before. He attempted to stretch out his leg, which was when he noticed that he was laying on a bed, not a military cot.

He hissed through his teeth, as a sharp pain wound its way around his upper chest, when he sat up to get a better look at his surroundings. He only managed to take in that he was in some sort of room, not a tent, before someone was moving towards him. The person, just out of Lu Ten’s sight, pushed down on his shoulder in an attempt to get him to lay back down. Lu Ten resisted only long enough for his ribs to start hurting again before collapsing back to the bed.

“Careful,” the stranger said, still out of Lu Ten’s sight. “The healers only just left. You'll be here for a couple of days at least before they'll let you out.”

Lu Ten’s mind was running slowly, so he wasn’t quite sure what the man, because it was definitely a man, even if the voice sounded a bit young, was talking about.

He turned his head to get a better look at the mystery man. He wasn't very tall, at least compared to Lu Ten but he stood by his bedside looking down at him with open curiosity. He was wearing a very odd looking uniform unlike anything Lu Ten had seen before.

“What?” Lu Ten asked, his voice hoarse. It was slightly painful to talk. “Healing? From what?”

The man’s eyes went wide, probably at how bad Lu Ten’s voice sounded. He reached for the bedside table and brought a glass of water to Lu Ten’s lips.

As Lu Ten drank the water slowly, the man explained, " That's what we want to know. You showed up on my doorstep like this.”

Lu Ten choked on the water. 

The man pulled the glass away as Lu Ten tried to cough up the water. His throat was burning from the pain of coughing and his ribs felt like they were trying to escape his body.

As Lu Ten got his breathing back under control, he noticed someone shifting in the chair behind the other man.

The other man’s eyes were locked on him, seemingly watching his every move as if Lu Ten was a danger.

Lu Ten turned back to the first man. “Where am I?” He asked, looking around at the bright white walls. “Who are you? Why does my throat feel like someone tried to shove a hot coal down it?"

"More important question," the man in the chair said. "Who are you?"

Lu Ten sat up in his bed and put as much power into his voice as possible.

"I am Prince Lu Ten," He said. "Son of Crown Prince Iroh, heir to the Dragon Throne."

"Fucking shit."

“Now how am I supposed to write that in a police report?"

**Author's Note:**

> The other three chapters will focus on each of the men in turn as Iroh and his mother find equilibrium in the loss of Zuko and the gaining of Lu Ten, Lu Ten adjusts to this strange new world and settles a score with his father and Mako finally gains the perspective needed to make up with his friends.
> 
> Because I seriously don't know where else to go with Lu Ten in the future.
> 
> This story has no real update schedule but it should be completely posted by May.
> 
> Hope you liked this small glimpse into a different timeline.


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